Indigenous Peoples and Child Welfare: The Path to Reconciliation

Commissioners were asked to look at virtually every aspect of the lives of the First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples of Canada in the North as well as in cities: their history, the way they are governed, their land claims, their treaties, their economy, their cultures, their education, their health, their living conditions, their relationship with the justice system, the state of their languages and more generally, their situation in Canada relative to that of non-Aboriginal Canadians. The task assigned to our Commission by the Government of Canada was in fact no less than recommending ways to rectify the errors made when Confederation came about in 1867 and, for the first time, make Aboriginal peoples true partners in this great undertaking. That meant recommending ways to lift up the apparatus of colonization that had been imposed upon Aboriginal peoples during the last 150 years and suggesting principles and structures upon and around which to restructure their relationship with Canada.